My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT • Hacker News Board

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#101

Post by swanson » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 4:21 AM UTC

lindentibbets wrote: post #73

I am the CEO over at IFTTT. I apologize for any misunderstanding our communications today have caused. I built the Pinboard Channel on IFTTT and have maintained it for years. I am also a paying customer of Pinboard! I’ve built for hundreds of platforms and any changes to those platforms by default suck. At IFTTT, we've been on the receiving end of platform changes too many times to count. I want to make sure we do it…

My hobby: role-playing how I would respond as the CEO if my company was getting skewered on HN. Here is my version!

---

I am [not] the CEO over at IFTTT. We messed up. Big time.

Pinboard -- and other services developers love -- played an important role in our success thus far and we dropped the ball with the roll-out of our new platform. We have a shared incentive: to make channels work reliably for our end-users. To both stabilize existing channels and to allow new services to connect to IFTTT, we are publishing documention for a standard API that any new channels will need to conform to.

Going forward, we will be allowing existing channels to run on the legacy platform. Additionally, we will be reviewing our ToS to clarify out intent. We're not keen on legalese, but it is part of the game when doing integrations between third parties.

To maciej, I've reached out personally via email to apologize for the unclear messaging to our users. If you would like to give us a chance to make things right, we would be grateful and happy to help resolve any other outstanding issues.

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#102

Post by pgrote » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 4:24 AM UTC

swanson wrote: post #101

lindentibbets wrote: post #73

I am the CEO over at IFTTT. I apologize for any misunderstanding our communications today have caused. I built the Pinboard Channel on IFTTT and have maintained it for years. I am also a paying customer of Pinboard! I’ve built for hundreds of platforms and any changes to those platforms by default suck. At IFTTT, we've been on the receiving end of platform changes too many times to count. I want to make sure we do it…

My hobby: role-playing how I would respond as the CEO if my company was getting skewered on HN. Here is my version! --- I am [not] the CEO over at IFTTT. We messed up. Big time. Pinboard -- and other services developers love -- played an important role in our success thus far and we dropped the ball with the roll-out of our new platform. We have a shared incentive: to make channels work reliably for our end-users. To…

Bingo.

Is there a reason legacy support cannot occur? I haven't seen it addressed.

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#103

Post by SN76477 » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 4:29 AM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #71

esperluette wrote: post #28

I agree that this is dumb of IFTTT. But I am all in favor of a 'recipe' that consists of "startup does dumb stuff=>Maciej writes a hilarious takedown=>I LOL so hard people ask me what's going on from two rooms away". Can someone implement the API for that, please?

Comedy is one of the great things in life that just wasn't meant to scale.

Deep man, deep...

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#104

Post by reitanqild » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 4:32 AM UTC

lindentibbets wrote: post #76

laydros wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The things you are saying here sound like your attitude is in the right place, but did you actually read the TOS your legal team sent out?

Yes I did. Agree that we could make some improvements

Making those improvements before sending it out would have been smart I think.

Some of us care a great deal about license agreements for different reasons.

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#105

Post by idlewords » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 4:36 AM UTC

makenova wrote: post #96

I applied to IFTTT about a year ago (didn't get the job), part of the interview process was to develop a channel on their developer platform. I don't consider my self a fast developer but it wasn't difficult and it took me about a weekend of casual work. Maciej is well within his rights to flip IFTTT the bird, but I just wanted to provide some context about how much work is involved.

I agree that implementing a simple API endpoint is easy.

Running that endpoint is not easy. Once it's live, you're dealing with an entangled system of API, user, network, database, server, full moon, voodoo curse, and God knows what else. It's a giant flaming tumbleweed of pain.

Clearly IFTTT agrees, and that's why they're trying to make us do it for them.

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#106

Post by toyg » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 4:50 AM UTC

pgrote wrote: post #102

swanson wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My hobby: role-playing how I would respond as the CEO if my company was getting skewered on HN. Here is my version! --- I am [not] the CEO over at IFTTT. We messed up. Big time. Pinboard -- and other services developers love -- played an important role in our success thus far and we dropped the ball with the roll-out of our new platform. We have a shared incentive: to make channels work reliably for our end-users. To…

Bingo. Is there a reason legacy support cannot occur? I haven't seen it addressed.

Legacy support is work, and ifttt would rather not do it, of course!

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#107

Post by toyg » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 5:00 AM UTC

guelo wrote: post #83

fabulist wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are a self-respecting programmer, you should ask yourself if someone has done a better job writing the same tool than you intend to do.

You have been handed down free libraries for RSS and Facebook containing thousands of lines of high quality code. If you can't put the few lines of glue code together and are willing to sacrifice your privacy and random legal restrictions to yet another service just for this little convenience, then... well if you don't respect yourself I'm not going to respect you either.

You write your little glue code, then you spin up a server to run it periodically (which costs money), then you're forever on the hook for patching, restarting, adding features, dealing with api changes, etc etc etc...

As opposed to "set up, forget about it, have a beer".

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#108

Post by flashman » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 5:08 AM UTC

swanson wrote: post #101

lindentibbets wrote: post #73

I am the CEO over at IFTTT. I apologize for any misunderstanding our communications today have caused. I built the Pinboard Channel on IFTTT and have maintained it for years. I am also a paying customer of Pinboard! I’ve built for hundreds of platforms and any changes to those platforms by default suck. At IFTTT, we've been on the receiving end of platform changes too many times to count. I want to make sure we do it…

My hobby: role-playing how I would respond as the CEO if my company was getting skewered on HN. Here is my version! --- I am [not] the CEO over at IFTTT. We messed up. Big time. Pinboard -- and other services developers love -- played an important role in our success thus far and we dropped the ball with the roll-out of our new platform. We have a shared incentive: to make channels work reliably for our end-users. To…

Bookmarked so you can write the post if and when I mess something up. Big time.

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#109

Post by toomuchtodo » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 5:23 AM UTC

voltagex_ wrote: post #57

toomuchtodo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Common interchange of what, though? Common interchange of schemeless data. Take data from here, put there. Pushing JSON blobs around, essentially.

Isn't that what HTTP POST/PUT is for? GET for pull?

HTTP POST/PUT/GET are underlying primitives for these automation systems, which are essentially polished messaging buses.

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#110

Post by tim333 » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 5:28 AM UTC

lindentibbets wrote: post #73

I am the CEO over at IFTTT. I apologize for any misunderstanding our communications today have caused. I built the Pinboard Channel on IFTTT and have maintained it for years. I am also a paying customer of Pinboard! I’ve built for hundreds of platforms and any changes to those platforms by default suck. At IFTTT, we've been on the receiving end of platform changes too many times to count. I want to make sure we do it…

>we know they will lead to a better Pinboard Channel on IFTTT in the long term

Well, reading Maciej writing it sounds like you will no longer be connecting to his backend while Botize will. These things happen. Sometimes it's best just to move on.